5/26/23

 Friday, May 26, 2023

In bed at 10:30, up at 5:50 from some weird immediately forgotten dream set in Ireland.  43℉, high of 61℉, sunny, calm day, wind only 4 mph,k 2 to 7 mph during the day and gusts only up to 11 mph.  No rain expected for 10 days.  The sun rose at 5:17 and will set at 8:19, 15+1.

Crooked Banks, Crooked Bankers.  JPMorgan Chase was Jeffrey Epstein's bank for 15 years during which he was found guilty of being a sexual predator likely to re-offend.  His estate is being sued by the U. S. Virgin Islands, where he owned a private island on which he carried on his predation, and by some of his victims.  The plaintiffs allege that the massive bank was complicit in funding Epstein's long history of sexual abuse and child sex trafficking.  The banker in charge of Epstein as a client admitted she was informed on at least 6 different occasions of his criminal and civil law history but did not think it was her responsibility to remove him as a client, launch an inquiry into his accounts or refer them to compliance officials. JPMorgan has a separate process for dealing with client-related legal issues, she said.  Her supervisor supervisor and one of Epstein’s close friends, did investigate the allegations against Epstein by asking the financier about them, according to records read during the deposition.  Where did Epstein move his accounts when JPMorganChase finally booted him?  Where else, to an even more crooked bank, Deutsche Bank!  And let us not forget the bank that, alas, holds the mortgage on our house, Wells Fargo.  In 2016, the bank was hit with a record fine for covertly opening some 2 million unauthorized customer credit card and deposit accounts, draining real accounts to fund them, and charging fees for services the customers didn’t request.  “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses,” said Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Because of the severity of these violations, Wells Fargo is paying the largest penalty the CFPB has ever imposed.”  The CFPB’s action came hard on the heels of revelations that the bank misapplied student loan payments to maximize fee income.  The federal agency (which Republicans want to abolist, of course) slapped a $3.6 million fine on the bank and demanded that it pay $410,000 in restitution to student loan borrowers who paid inflated fees and charges as the result of the bank’s improper actions. Wells Fargo settled the student loan action without admitting or denying guilt, saying that it disagreed with the CFPB but settled “to put the matter behind us.”  The agency also wanted Wells to pay full restitution to all victims and a $100 million fine to the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund on top of an additional $35 million penalty to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and another $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles.

On June 22, 1936, H.L. Mencken wrote the following in The Baltimore Sun: "The insurance of small deposits, even if the insurance is actually paid when it is needed, will certainly not suffice to prevent wildcat banking...What is to be done about crooked banks, nitwit banks, bad banks in general?"  His answer to his own question made sense then and still does: "(One approach) is that, when a bank suspends payment, it would simplify matters to hang (or, in any case, to jail) all its officers and directors at once, whether its suspension be due to its roguery, to their stupidity, or only to their bad luck."  What a quaint idea!  That bankers, not just the corporate banks they run, should be subject to harsh penalties for their crookedness and/or stupidity, in all events tied to avarice.  Let us remember all the bankers who went to jail after the 2008 debacle caused in large measure by bankers - none.  Thank you Barack Obama, Tim Geithner, and Eric Holder.  More H. L. Mencken: “ . . . it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.”

Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime.  " . . . painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her course as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advances of Decrepitude."

Micaela, an oil painted decades ago

Jim Harrison, "The Land of Unlikeness" in The River Swimmer.  "Now he was speculating whether Laurette would pose half-nude on the car seat.  The whole idea was preposterously silly but why not?  It was no more cheeky than the idea of his resuming painting.  Part of the grace of losing self-importance was the simple question: "Who cares?"  More importantly, he didn't want to be a painter, he only wanted to paint, two utterly different impulses . . . Clive didn't want to be anything any longer that called for a title.  He knew how to paint so why not paint?  Everyone had to do something while awake."

Micaela with ferkrymter wrist after a skiing mishap